Touch the Fire
by smithereen
Summary: sydsark. dark ficlet. He knows her death by heart.


**Touch the Fire**  
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The heel of her hand against his cheek hard enough to bruise is a caress. Her foot slams against his ribs, and the crack is like a kiss. Her knee, blocked with his hands, her skin under his fingers for just a moment, and his heart races. They collide, breath knocked away, and fall. Their fingers touch as they both reach for the gun, and he still can't catch his breath. When he shivers, it's not because of the cold metal pressed to his hand. He points the gun at her head, at her mouth, pulls the trigger; but she's already moving. He misses. She throws a chair at the window, and it shatters. Another bullet embedded in the desk she hides behind. She runs, and she is beautiful, like a wild thing, stronger than a butterfly, brighter than a lion. Then she is gone, one more bullet sailing through the window in her wake. He looks down at her floating below him, her parachute wings a shadow in the night. He doesn't take another shot, though she makes an easy target.

When he kills her, he wants to be close enough to smell her, touch her, and see himself reflected in her eyes.

Death is not personal. It never has been before. But it is this time.

He keeps tabs on her. Wonders when she drops off his radar. Wonders if someone else got to her. The idea of it, of someone else taking what is his is unacceptable. He has trained himself not to show emotion, not to let it affect him, trained himself so well in fact he rarely does feel anything at all. But the thought of not being there. Of not being the one... It makes him almost light-headed with rage. She's never out of danger. Has enemies all over the globe. Death could come to her at any time, from any direction. She could even survive a mission and then be in a car accident, a plane crash. She could have an aneurysm out of the blue. In his head he knows this. But deeper down, deeper than knowing, he feels to his bones that she is his. That he has to be the one to kill her. He will be. He MUST be.

And when it does happen, he wants it to be perfect. Not from a distance. He wants to watch it happen. He wants to memorize her face, her pain, her blood, her life as it leaks out of her.

He pictures it, when he's alone at night with the world around him sleeping. He doesn't sleep, but he dreams. Of her. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like to feel her lips against his ribs instead of her boot. Instead of her fist, to have her lips, those amazing, full lips, collide against his own. He wonders what it would be like to see something in her eyes when she looks at him, something more than disgust, hate, defiance.

Those thoughts are fleeting, impossible. He confines himself to what he is capable of. There is no sense in reaching for what is beyond him.

He knows her death by heart. He pictures her eyes when the bullet hits her. He sees her touch the wound, the shock on her face. Hears the ragged gasp of breath exhaled from between her lips. He hears her heart slow, stop. He catches her body as it falls, and eases it to the ground, and lets her bleed on him a while. He might even hold her hand as the fire in her goes out. He will shut her eyes with his fingers when they've gone blank and staring.

He wants to be the last thing she sees.

Death is a job. It's just what he does. And he's good at it.

But he pictures it, and he knows with her it will be different. Because she's different. Like a human being. But stronger, brighter. Like a comet, a moving fire that streaks across the sky, burning, blinding. But here, in this world, made of skin and flesh and bone and blood. He doesn't understand how she can exist in this world. She doesn't seem to belong to it. She is more. Better. He isn't even truly sure she can be killed. Somehow, he can't make himself believe it's possible for something so bright and beautiful to be touched, not even by death. But one day even the sun will burn itself out, leaving the earth just as dead as its own cooling corpse. One day she'll be snuffed out like the sun, and he knows that it will leave him without the sunrise, without warmth. He dreads it.

He craves it.

He wants her. The bright, blazing fire that is her. But he cannot touch the fire. He can only touch the skin, the bone, the blood. He does not know how to touch without hurting. He does not know how to feel like other people do. Love like other people do. He is not a man any more than she is a woman. But where she soars and burns bright, he is only dark, empty. He can only destroy. It's the only thing he's good at.

She will never kiss him with her mouth, only with her fists, her blade, her gun. He cannot hold her like a lover would. But he will hold her, touch her in his own way. He will have her. What part of her he can reach. Her pain. Her fear. Her death.

He hopes only for what he can reach, reaches only for what he is capable of grasping. When her eyes are closed. When there's nothing left but the blood, the bone, the fragile body. When the fire has gone out. Then he will touch his lips to hers. Once.

Death is personal when it comes to her.

She is different.

end


End file.
